The Demon Hunter
by BettieNoir
Summary: Jennifer Thornton strikes fear in the hearts of demons everywhere as the powerful Demon Hunter aided by her trusty sword, a really irritating Norse god and just about anything else a high school student can scrounge up. JJ but don't expect the whole thing


The Demon Hunter  
  
The Daily Misadventures of Jennifer Thornton  
  
The street lamps in the district were all out of repair and Jennifer Thornton noted the filthiness of the gutter with disdain as she passed.  
  
:: It was three in the morning and the streets were still dark. ::  
  
Jenny had read that in a young adult's novel before. The story, she recalled, was silly and quite impossible. The young heroine was running from a bunch of stereotypical thugs when she was saved by a handsome young man. That, unfortunately, wasn't going to happen in real life. Whatever Jenny encountered now, she had to face on her own.  
  
The darkness was like cocoa in the milky stillness of the night.  
  
The smell of smoke rose seductively in the air.  
  
It was the ideal place to meet a shadow man.  
  
Or thugs.  
  
Whichever you encountered first.  
  
Shadow men were preferable. They were harder to eradicate but most definitely more pleasing to the eye.  
  
She had come to this place before. A long time ago. A moment that changed her life.  
  
A boy-god. Electric blue eyes. A Byronic poet.  
  
When he had vanished, she swore never to return to this desolate place.  
  
And here she was again; walking around the seediest part of town on the coldest day of the summer wearing nothing but shorts, a tank top and sneakers.  
  
Cursing herself for forgetting a hair elastic, she looked about with sharp eyes, scanning for any sign of danger. Detecting no threat, she leapt with one powerful bound onto a nearby roof, crouching on the rotting shingles, hiding in the shadows of the night.  
  
Obviously Jennifer Thornton was not taking a stroll for her health. Her nightly visitation, though unpleasant, was totally necessary for the maintenance of this city.  
  
Just as she was about to relax her muscles, she heard a scratching noise behind her. Alert and ready, Jenny popped the sword she held in her left hand out of its sheath and into the air, catching it deftly with her right.  
  
In one smooth motion she countered the demon's strike with her own blade. The swords sliced through its hand and then its torso easily and the purple substance that Jenny knew was a demon's equivalence of blood flew out of its wounded appendage splurting into the air and onto Jenny's tank top.  
  
Jenny groaned as she inspected her ruined clothing. As she wiped the demon's blood with her left hand, she felt a couple of the tiles fall of the roof and looked down. The demon, fatally wounded but still alive, was making one more feeble attempt to fight.  
  
"You ruined by shirt, you jackass!" Jenny snarled at the demon self- righteously and with that, she decapitated it. The poor head rolled off the roof and fell into the drain. The blonde knelt beside the body and murmured a few words of magic and the head and body went up into flames.  
  
After she made sure the body was in ashes, she flicked the blood off her sword and sheathed it. One down; a billion to go.  
  
Jenny leapt off the roof, annoyed at herself for being so careless with her clothing. She couldn't buy a new shirt every time she killed a demon. This was the fourth one she ruined in three days.  
  
Loki had suggested wearing a poncho but Jennifer flat out refused him. Her only poncho was pink, left over from high school, and Loki had almost laughed out loud when he tried to picture her wearing a bright pink poncho, trying to blend with the shadows and threaten blood thirsty demons.  
  
Jennifer Thornton. Demon hunter extraordinaire.  
  
Who woulda thought of it. Sweet, innocent Sun Bunny. Killing demons a few hours before school on a Monday morning.  
  
Whatever.  
  
Jenny allowed tense muscles to slowly sag and relax when her house came into view. As a Demon Hunter she was able to run fast, but it still took a while to get home.  
  
She easily leapt through her window into her room, throwing the offensive tank top over her head and into the laundry basket, swearing under her breath when she realized she got the purple "shit" all over the clothes already there. Angrily kicking off the rest of her clothes she stepped into the shower and turned it on boiling hot. Pink tinged hands, reached for the large brush her mother used to "exfoliate" and began to scrub viciously at her delicate skin leaving red streaks in their wake, tangling into the chain that hung around her neck. When she was finished, she threw the brush to the side, stepped out of the shower, dried herself off and collapsed, too tired to throw on pajamas, in her bed.  
  
***  
  
The sun from the west rises on a barren land. Fields of nothingness. Emptiness. Frozenness.  
  
It began here.  
  
Jenny stood above the snow, not sinking though the ground was soft.  
  
Around her were the Dark Ones. The Tricksters. The Shadow Men.  
  
They were saying something to her; something important. Their faces were frantic and their hands signaled for her to hurry.  
  
But the icy winds over powered their voices and covered their frozen forms.  
  
***  
  
Jenny wakes.  
  
And realized that her alarm clock had been ringing for almost twenty minutes.  
  
***  
  
"Pardon me for saying so, J, but you look like shit this morning." Loki greeted cheerfully from his perch atop the high brick wall that surrounded the school yard. His brunette hair, cut expertly and attractively, was flapping about ridiculously in the wind. One hand held his back pack and on his face was his all too familiar irritating and all-knowing smile.  
  
Jenny looked up into his annoying and yet handsome figure and chucked her book bag at him praying that he would fall off from the extra weight.  
  
She watched disappointedly as he caught it easily despite the three text books zipped securely inside and hopped off the ten foot partition as if it were hopscotch.  
  
"Aw shut up.", Jenny grumbled.  
  
"Cheer up Sun Bunny." Loki laughed poking her in the ribs, only making her growl at him. Slinging her back pack over his shoulder, his face softened when he noticed the red steaks peaking out from under her blouse. "I mean it, Jennifer. Relax. You're going to burn yourself out."  
  
Jennifer stopped abruptly making almost tripping the brown haired man beside her.  
  
"Relax?" she snarled. "How am I supposed to relax when every time I try I..."  
  
Her words broke off as the school bell ran.  
  
Angrily, she grabbed his wrist, dragging him up two stories into their class room in record time. She tossed him into his seat and sat in her own beside his with thirty seconds to spare before the second bell.  
  
Dee sat behind her and rose in eye brow at her friend's flushed appearance.  
  
"Don't ask." Jenny warned and Loki tried not to laugh. Dee rolled her eyes as Mrs. Foster, a toughened old bird, wizened by two decades of wise cracking honor students, stepped into the classroom.  
  
The lesson was dry as it was everyday, the monotony broken by an occasional snide remark from Loki. Mid period, Mrs. Foster handed Jenny a yard stick and gave her explicit permission to smack her desk neighbor whenever he opened his mouth.  
  
When the bell rang for their dismissal, Loki had been smack a grand total of ten times and Jenny had a look of supreme satisfaction on her face.  
  
Jenny was still Jenny. Demon hunter or AP student.  
  
By lunch, she was ready to collapse from exhaustion but had to stay after class to hand in a few more notes to her history teacher. Dragging herself towards the cafeteria, she saw her friends wave at her from the usual table and crumpled into a seat next to Summer.  
  
"Yo. You alrity Jenny?" Michael asked poking her with his spork.  
  
"Leave me alone." Jenny whined.  
  
Loki had purloined a mozzarella stick from Michael's lunch tray moments before and was now nibbling on it. Jenny supposed he was eating because he had nothing else to do.  
  
After all, Loki's kind didn't really need to eat.  
  
Food.  
  
Summer leaned forwards conspiratorially. "Didja kill it J?" she asked earnestly.  
  
Jenny grabbed a sandwich from an indignant Zach's lunch box not feeling the least bit guilty and bit into it. "What do you think?" she growled moodily. "God dammit. It was a low level demon. Loki could have killed it by snapping his fingers."  
  
She gave Loki a good glare as if all of this was his fault. In a way, it sorta was.  
  
"And why don't you help Jenny kill demons again?" asked Zach.  
  
Loki grinned. "That's not my job, Mr. Artiiiiist.", he smiled merrily stressing the last syllable with a mocking tone. "I'm here to make sure Jenny does her duty."  
  
"And what's her duty again?"  
  
Loki totally ignored the glares directed his way.  
  
Jenny took the heated silence as dumbfounded ness. "My duty is to contain the demon population in this world. Note the word contain. Not wipe out because the Gods in all their frickin glory, are too lazy to watch over them themselves and too afraid of the Morningstar to wipe out the horde of them."  
  
Loki nodded happily. "Yeah. Basically. It's more complicated than that but you got most of it down pat."  
  
With one hand, chucked the now empty sandwich bag into the trash can and with the other, she dragged across her mouth.  
  
Audrey took a sip of her milk shake. "We should go shopping today, Jenny. You and me. What do you say?"  
  
Jenny's eyes closed in fatigue. "If I see one more t-shirt sale, I'm going to scream."  
  
Dee nudged her side. "We could go to Lily Jones' party."  
  
Jenny groaned, burying her head in her arms. "Do you remember the last Lily Jones' party Dee? Tom convinced me to take a sip of "water". It was actually vodka. I got totally smashed and started the Macarena on the kitchen table."  
  
Michael laughed leaning back into his seat. "Good times man. Good times."  
  
Their poor Demon Hunting friend had had it. Getting up, she left her table for the relative quiet of the music room.  
  
Ignoring their alarmed cries and Loki's much-too-gorgeous-to-be-safe's- gaze, she took the stairs two at a time, opened the doors and then slumped on the piano seat.  
  
Her life it should seem was a joke to some people.  
  
Graceful and deceptively strong fingers reached inside her sweater for the chain, pulling it out from the top. The ring followed. Ah. The ring. Her memory of the most wasted time of her life.  
  
It wouldn't have worked out. She knew that much. She wasn't naïve to think it wouldn't work. She wasn't ready back then for him. She was too sheltered, too used to lukewarm kisses and mother and father dearest; interior decorators and days at the beach. No. She had not been ready to be with him.  
  
But she had been ready to love him.  
  
And she did.  
  
He was that which she prized in everything.  
  
:: I am my own master. ::  
  
But she wasn't. Not really. Not anymore.  
  
A short while after her return into the mortal world, Jenny's temperament swung on a pendulum.  
  
Her friends and family isolated her because of her new bitter attitude. She was alone.  
  
And during that time, she was compelled to return to the deserted street on which she found the Game Shop.  
  
At night.  
  
She walked there, sneaking out her widow and scratching legs on the vines that wrapped on her side of the house. (Later on, it only took a leap.)  
  
And there, leaning against the wall, was Loki.  
  
His eyes were dark. His gaze was darker.  
  
With a nod of his head, two shadows separated themselves from the darkness behind him and attacked her.  
  
'Juilian!'  
  
His name was a mantra, chanted again and again and again. Perhaps she was too used to his rescues, his pity. She did not know.  
  
And than fear.  
  
Fear deeper and darker than anything she ever imagined.  
  
And as she felt herself drowning in nightmares and evil she hear Loki's voice in her mind like a loud bell. 'Sword! Get the sword!'  
  
Jenny, too far in her terror to understand him, writhed in agony as the shadows, like ink, began to smother her.  
  
One of them had it's tentacle like appendages around the chain at her throat ready to strangle her with it.  
  
Loki's voice reached a deafening volume. 'SWORD. USE THE SWORD. YOUR SWORD."  
  
A thousand voices were chanting in her head. She could smell the cold concrete beneath her and she could feel the clouds, invisible in the darkened sky, move from one end of the atmosphere to the other.  
  
It was that second when she felt the hot metal against her sweaty palms. Long and deadly.  
  
Something old and deep inside of her knew exactly what to do with it. With one graceful motion, she got up and whirled in an elegant circle, unsheathing her sword in the process and beheading the two shadow demons.  
  
And than just as quickly, she sheathed the sword, the action only stopped by a quick flick of the sword to get the black slimy discharge off the blade.  
  
The sword.  
  
Jenny stared at the length of mental with awe. She never knew she was capable of doing something like that.  
  
She was brought out of her stupor by rough applauding. Loki.  
  
His name simply came into her head when he stared at the handsome god.  
  
Automatically, her hands came up in a defensive position, ready to attack if he showed any more signs of aggression.  
  
Loki sighed staring at the hostile look in her eyes. "I'm not gonna hurt you, babe. Just wanted you to get the sword."  
  
"Prove it", Jenny snarled.  
  
Loki's form in front of her disappeared. No puffs of smoke. No loud bangs. Just disappeared.  
  
Jenny's eyes widened and she squeaked when she felt a strong arm around her waist.  
  
"Chill babe. If I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead."  
  
Her body against his warm one sagged. All of the sudden she felt very sleepy.  
  
"I knew it. Your not used to usin your body like that." He clucked his tongue. She blacked out and woke up in her room. The sword was gone.  
  
She watched the sun rise out of the earth.  
  
And she felt a strange internal strength she never felt before.  
  
She had walked to school early. She had nothing better to do. There, perched on the high brick wall, was Loki grinning devilishly.  
  
He hopped down beside her.  
  
"So. What's our first class?"  
  
Jenny's shock and fear was overcome with irritation. Not even Julian went as far as to assimilate himself into her daily life like this. Although the chocolate eyes godling was a mystery to her and attacked her the previous night, nothing in his friendly, playful demeanor felt like a threat.  
  
In fact. He actually felt...safe.  
  
Jenny tossed him her own back which he caught and obligingly slung over his shoulder along with his own.  
  
"Honors English, AP Spanish, GYM, AP History..."  
  
Loki was only half listening, basking in the sun as if he hadn't felt it in a million years. Perhaps he hadn't. But seeing her companion so happy gave Jenny a sense of hope. Perhaps she had a purpose. Perhaps she DID deserve Julian's sacrifice for what she could do for the world.  
  
Loki's eyes were warm and caring and she felt her stomach tie into little knots. Not of love for a lover but of just pure affection.  
  
The same eyes would turn stern and mocking when he trained her.  
  
Because Jenny was Jenny but also known as the Demon Hunter. 


End file.
